Abbeyleix

A planned estate village built by the de Vesci family in the 1770s, moved wholesale from the old settlement by the Cistercian abbey that gave it its name. The carpets for the Titanic were woven in the mill here.

• Rock of Dunamase · A fortress on a rock over the midland plain, sacked by Vikings out of Dublin in 845. Diarmait Mac Murchada is said to have given it with his daughter Aoife to Strongbow in 1170 — a dowry that helped bring the Normans in. Cromwell’s men blew it up in 1650.
• Aghaboe Abbey · Canice’s 6th-century monastery in Osraige — ‘the little field of the cow’. Burned in 1234, and again in 1346 when the shrine holding his bones and relics was destroyed. The ruin standing today is the Dominican friary raised on the site in 1382.
• Dunmore Cave · Where the annals say Vikings massacred a thousand people in 928. Bones of women and children were found inside in 1973 — and a Viking silver hoard in 1999.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.